The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution prohibits raiding anyone’s home except “upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” With those immortal words the Founders put this essential safeguard into the Bill of Rights against the abuse of federal power that victimized Trump with the FBI’s raid on his home Mar-a-Lago.
Political persecutions hide behind secrecy, and transparency would help stop them. There was no justification for federal agents to demand that Mar-a-Lago staff turn off the surveillance cameras so that the agents could violate limits on the scope of the warrant without accountability. Despite the deliberate intimidation caused by more than 30 armed agents ransacking Trump’s home, his skeleton summer staff courageously refused the agents’ improper demand to turn off the cameras. Yet there remains no accountability for how federal agents tried to hide their own misconduct from surveillance.
Trump used his Truth Social platform to call the encroachment “an assault on a political opponent at a level never seen before in our Country.” The following day, Garland’s DOJ tracked down pro-Trump Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) while he was on a family vacation, so that three armed agents could make a surprise grab of his cell phone in front of his young children. A personal cell phone, like one’s home, contains much private and confidential information that the government has no right to see, and Trump points out that the raid against him stole his confidential documents. Rep. Perry is not genuinely suspected of any wrongdoing, and neither is Trump with respect to documents he lawfully kept as president and had the right to declassify at any point.
Every American should be frightened by this outrageous infringement on constitutional rights for political gain. It may be impossible to seat 12 jurors who are not themselves scared by these tactics by the Biden Administration, in a future criminal trial or grand jury deliberations against a Trump supporter or even Trump himself. If Americans are to have “liberty and justice for all,” we must restore the faith of the American people in our justice system.
